THE LA INTERNATIONAL 2001: A Celebration
Various locations, Los Angeles
Summer 2001

I was talking recently to a gallery dealer, just a few weeks before the planned opening of the LA International 2001, and asked him whether he was intending to participate. At first, given the imminence of the event, I was surprised to hear that he had not yet made firm plans, but was debating a couple of options that might, or might not, materialize. And then of course I realized that what I was hearing was precisely the strength of the International, and what distinguishes it from the now-familiar international art fairs and from art-world spectaculars such as the Kassel Documenta or the Venice Bienale: its informality.

And having once come to that realization, my mind began to go off on that old narcissistic riff about Los Angeles, how we stack up against New York and other cultural meccas, our roller coaster hopes for respect and recognition, our lack of any identifiable geographical center, our cultural diversity. Los Angeles, City of the Future… And so on. And then I thought to myself, No: as they say these days, I'm not going there. It's been done to death. Besides, the acronymical L.A., as it's universally known, is famously whatever its perceiver believes it to be at any given moment. Are we the world's center of informality? If so, so be it. If not, not.

It might be interesting, on the other hand, to explore the notion of informality, and what it has to say about the LA International as an aesthetic and cultural experience. In what ways does it differ from Venice and Kassel, or from, say, Basel and Chicago? First, as my dealer friend suggested, it can be staged more or less spontaneously. An art exposition requires years of preparation; an art fair, at least months. For the LA International, museum curators, gallery dealers, and artists are free to plan ahead, meticulously, as some like to do, or to jump in at the very last moment with unannounced surprises and projects that ripen-as projects do-in their own time, and just happen to reach fruition coincident in timing with the event.

This kind of spontaneity is much more in tune with the process that most artists, these days, respect as an important element in their work. In the creative experience, things happen less according to schedule than the confluence of intention and chance, in a space and time made right and necessary in the light of internal rather than external contingencies. The quality of spontaneity is also especially hospitable to new media, like videotape and digital disc, which are cheaply and speedily transported, or transmitted via the telephone lines. The LA International takes shape and gains momentum, one gathers, not according to any rules or schedule laid out by the organizers, but rather in its own good time. If some opportunities are missed along the way, if some plans fail to reach fruition, that's simply an inevitable by-product of the informality-and I use that word now advisedly, as a lack of rigorous formal structure-inherent in the nature of the event.

Great things can happen, and do. Two notable events in this year's line-up are Burnett Miller's return to Los Angeles with an all-star exhibition documenting the maverick dealer's passionate and timely conviction that a systemic pollution is poisoning both our natural and our political environment; and the Joseph Beuys exhibition that Bill Griffin has assembled at Griffin Contemporary-marking a Los Angeles first, amazingly, for this most influential of post-war radical German artists. By the same token, great intentions can end up suddenly on the scrap heap. And they do.

The International differs from the art fair, too, in that it offers more of what artists want and galleries need. The art fair provides the restricted space of a booth, the competition of hundreds of other artists and thousands of other art works, and the limited duration of a few hectic days. The aisles are noisy, crowded, filled with visual and social distraction. The lighting is hastily ad hoc. In short, the viewing conditions are less than optimal, to say the least. The LA International, by contrast, offers all the advantages of dedicated museum and gallery spaces, and the prolonged viewing period of a full exhibition's run-not to mention the possibility of critical response in newspapers and art journals.

More important even than this, the LA International is relatively free of the expectations that impinge on art expositions and art fairs. For the exposition, these are aesthetic and critical: the expectation is that something of current significance must be said, that the great issues of the day will be addressed, that important reputations will be established or reinforced. In contrast, the LA International can afford to be refreshingly unassuming or, on the other hand, to take bold, even outrageous risks. There is no point to be made, other than a friendly collegiality of spirit.

For art fairs, the expectations are necessarily commercial. To participate, a gallery must make a significant financial investment for travel, shipping, and accommodation, not to mention the fair costs themselves. Such an investment inevitably carries with it the expectation of return. Exposure itself, of course, is a part of that return-but the end goal has to be financial. The LA International offers all of the benefits already noted, and at a substantially reduced financial stake. With fewer commercial imperatives, then, participants are freed to take the kind of risks they would be loath to take in the context of an art fair. For host galleries, without the kind of commitment they need to make to an artist whom they undertake to represent, the risk can be even more attractive. For guest galleries and artists, participation in the LA International is (almost) pure bonus, an opportunity to be taken, as it were, on the wing.

No wonder there's a sense of relief and joy around this event. No one, after all, is obligated. It reflects badly on no one not to participate. The risk of financial loss or gain, while not of course eliminated, is much reduced. The commercial spirit of competition transforms into the spirit of collegiality-a sense that for this one month in the year, at least, we're all in this together, museums and galleries, artists, dealers, collectors, even critics! I see no need to freight this year's event with big statements about international art trends or the benefits or dangers of globalization. The LA International, it seems to me, is a celebration, a town meeting rather than a conference. It offers an exciting chance to hear a cacophony of voices, not necessarily related. Providing a smorgasbord that is unashamed of its eclecticism and diversity of both taste and quality, it invites us to take an informal look at what's happening in the art world at large, and to celebrate the universal experience of human creativity.